Mattress covers made of a uniform permeable cover material, of cotton for example, have long been known for general use for the purpose of completely enveloping a mattress in a form that can be closed by snap fasteners, buttons or slide fasteners, or for covering the top and margins of the mattress and covering only part of its bottom. What is involved is a covering which can be removed and laundered for cleanliness and hygienic purposes.
Additional requirements for a mattress cover have arisen from the knowledge that even in a clean and hygienically maintained household, house mites normally infest mattresses in large numbers in order to take advantage of sleeping humans on the one hand by using the heat and moisture they provide, and on the other hand to obtain nourishment from the tiny skin flakes shed by humans. Especially the excrement of these house mites has been identified as one of the worst allergens, so that protection against such allergens is important not only for the great and increasing number of people suffering from "house dust" allergy, but also for the great numbers of people whose sensitivity has not yet led to physical reactions as serious as illness.
For protection against such allergens, there have been developments which are aimed at sealing a mattress hermetically. That still allows for comfortably lying on a mattress since it is still soft, but it is not comfortable climatically, since normally about one-third of the water vapor transpired from a body passes through the mattress. A completely sealed mattress thus results in a blockage of air and vapor, wetting the body, the nightclothes and the bed covering. This leads to an unhealthy and intolerable sweating, as well as to wet conditions in the surrounding textiles.
Mattress covers made of cotton fabric treated with heat and pressure, especially quilt fabrics, are being offered as bedding permeable to air and water vapor. For since it had been found by studies that the quilt fabric is not woven tightly enough to block out house mites with a body size of about 20 .mu.m, it was hoped to create by such treatment a block against the allergens, i.e., the mite excrement with a size of less than 1 .mu.m. Certainly no satisfactory solution can be seen in this because such heat and pressure treated fabric as novel goods can have barrier qualities, but with wear and especially laundering they are lost.
According to another proposal (DE 40 27 798 C2) the use of a polyurethane layer reinforced by a textile material, such as a polyester knit goods, can be provided as a vapor-permeable but water-tight mattress cover. But such a coating would very quickly become useless because absorbed water vapor condenses in the water-tight coating and then cannot escape. It also lacks sufficient permeability to air.